Rune secures 100th tour-level win in Montpellier

Holger Rune earned his 100th tour-level victory on Thursday evening when he defeated Pablo Llamas Ruiz 7-5, 6-2 in the second round of the Open Sud de France.

"It's cool and hopefully the first milestone of many. It means a lot to achieve that," Rune said.

The top seed needed eight set points to secure the opening set. But once the Dane pulled ahead, he was able to maintain his momentum and triumph after one hour and 26 minutes.

"It's never easy. He's more used to the conditions than me. I think he played three matches coming through the qualies, so obviously [he had] great rhythm and he played free," Rune said. "It was a battle, especially in the first set with some tight moments. But I'm just happy to be back here in Montpellier and playing some good tennis."

Welcome to the 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ club, Holger 🙌@holgerrune2003 dismisses Llamas Ruiz 7-5 6-2 to reach the milestone! @OpenSuddeFrance | #OSDF24 pic.twitter.com/N2ww09uB7S

— ATP Tour (@atptour) February 1, 2024

Llamas Ruiz had never played a tour-level match on a hard court before upsetting former World No. 7 Richard Gasquet in the first round, and the 21-year-old Spaniard battled hard in front of the French fans. He played aggressively when he needed to serving at 5-6 in the first set, staving off opportunity after opportunity.

But Rune finally broke through and then broke again in his first return game of the second set to change the tenor of the match. The top seed showed the deep, powerful baseline game that has him at No. 7 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

"It was crazy points, especially at 15/40," Rune said. "That's how it is sometimes. You've got to get through and do whatever it takes if it's pretty or not. It's about getting it done, so I'm happy with the way I had my mindset today."

According to Infosys ATP Stats, Rune won 43 per cent of his return points and converted four of his 13 break points to reach the quarter-finals, in which he will play American Michael Mmoh, who eliminated home favourite Alexandre Muller 6-4, 6-4.

"I never played him but I saw him play actually a couple of times here in France," Rune said of his match against Mmoh. "He's a great athlete, he's capable of running for a lot of balls and has big power, so now it's just about preparing, getting ready for tomorrow and doing everything I can to win."

Rune is now 100-64 in tour-level matches and 14 of his wins have come against Top 10 opponents. His 48.3 winning percentage against the Top 10 ranks sixth among active players, trailing only Novak Djokovic (69.5%), Rafael Nadal (64.6%), Carlos Alcaraz (59%), Andy Murray (52.5%) and Daniil Medvedev (50.6%), all of whom have reached World No. 1.